Jumping in Headfirst

Action Comics I'm abstaining to see how this story plays out first, but this is quite the selection of top-tier Superman villains for the latest formation of the Superman Revenge Squad.  They're missing some of his more powerful/dangerous foes like Luthor, Doomsday, and Brainiac, but this is still enough to take the Man of Steel down.   And I'm all for raising the stakes--the Sinister Six have been a crucial part in some neat Spidey stories--but at a certain point I do end up wondering how the hero can survive such an onslaught back to back? There's a point where Clark heads up to the Justice League satellite and meets Bruce while hunting down the Eradicator, but it just made me wonder why you wouldn't call the whole Justice League if you knew this big an array of villains was coming after you.  I get that Superman "never loses", but everyone has a limit.  So like I said: I'm cautiously waiting to see how Jurgens gets Superman out of this one wit

Whatever bad thoughts I had about last episode, I take them back.  They were setting up for this amazingness and it's all been worth it.

Well, not every episode can be a winner...

Welcome back everyone, we're nearing the end!  As ridiculous as it is to claim a "winner" to a conference that's ostensibly about business products, Sony's been proclaimed to be the just that since this generation began.  Between fighting anti-corporation practices in 2013, revealing three of the most anticipated titles in gaming in 2015, or presenting one of the most focused, tight presentations of all time in 2016, it's been a pretty consistent clean sweep in favor of Sony thus far.  Can they live up to it again?  Let's find out! Sony's presentation this year is on June 12th, 6PM Pacific, 9PM Eastern. If you missed any of the columns leading up to now, check them out here: EA Microsoft Bethesda Ubisoft

Back again with this week's installment.  We're nearing home and even though I've had this article written for about two weeks now, I bet I had to come in and revise some stuff.  Anyhow, this is Part One of this week's Road to E3, where I talk about the most ambitious AAA publisher in gaming, Ubisoft.  If you're not a Ubi fan, make sure to join me at 12:30PM for a look at Sony's show.   And if you missed last week's discussions on Microsoft and Bethesda, you can do that here for Microsoft and here for Bethesda.  And if you missed the one before that on EA, check that out here . 

The season finale is upon us!  Iris has been killed, probably.  So where does that leave Barry and Team Flash, and more importantly: how are they going to stop Savitar?

Half a year later and we're finally here at the season finale.  So, how do you repel an alien invasion when literally all of your friends aren't able to help you and your cousin with the exact same powers as you is now brainwashed and fighting on the side of the bad guys?

Astro City I've got an idea for Kurt's first comic book when he's done with the main Astro City series: Kittyhawk!  Starring a super-powered kitty with heightened intelligence, phasing powers and flight, along with her well-meaning but often oblivious super-powered masters!  I'd read it, but then again I'm also a Hero Cats fan.   If you couldn't guess, this was a cute, whimsical little one-shot about a cat who got adopted by a pair of heroes after an adventure where it got covered in this strange, radioactive goop that gave it powers, and since then it's been (presumably) helping the duo on cases.  I appreciate Kurt for mixing it up too--if Astro City has any one flaw its that all the bittersweet stories that end up being heartbreaking for one way or another can kinda pile up on themselves.  This was a nice change of pace to shake things up for a short while.

Ah, my second E3 post this week.  It's almost like I have some vague idea of what I'm doing for once.  If you missed it, earlier today I also did a post on Windows' Microsoft's Xbox conference .  You can find that here, and you can find last week's EA post here if you missed it. Our newest company to the E3 party, Bethesda made an unexpected announcement that they would be joining the big show a few years ago, and they've been a welcome addition ever since.  Last year the company showed off titles like Quake Champions which is meant to launch later this year, Dishonored 2, and Prey.   So what's the Skyrim/Fallout developer have for us this time around? The Bethesda show starts on Sunday June 11th, at 7PM Pacific, 10PM Eastern , so we won't know for sure until then, but these are my guesses:

Here we are with the first major conference of E3. Microsoft is in a tough position here, as I'd say they're probably the company with the least amount of excitement surrounding them.  Sony has drowned their fans in first-party titles and gone on to have monster sales for their PlayStation 4 console, and the Nintendo Switch is currently lighting up the sales charts as fans enjoy Zelda and re-discover Mario Kart 8 while looking forward to titles like ARMS and Splatoon 2 for the summer.   By comparison, Microsoft's currently enduring a drought of first-party titles and enjoying a distant second in the console race.   Is all hope lost for the company?  Probably not, as they do have the Xbox Scorpio to show off here, which all but guarantees they'll have the vast majority of the best-looking titles of E3.  Plus they've got an array of major first- and third-party titles launching this fall, so let's get into them. Microsoft's conference airs Sunday, June

The day has finally come.  Does Iris West survive?

This episode is....woof.   I'm not gonna lie, it's just a long-ass list of complaints this time around...

From the first trailer I saw King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, I hoped it would be a resounding success.  I'm a fan of Guy Ritchie's films for one, but then also it looked to be unafraid of taking chances with Arthurian lore unlike so many of the adaptations before it, all of which from the modern era appear to be obsessed with making things as "realistic" as possible.   But there's nothing realistic about a man pulling a magic sword from a stone and the man becoming king because of guidance from an ancient wizard.   When I hear the words "King Arthur", I picture dragons and knights in magically protected armor achieving the impossible--basically being high fantasy versions of superheroes.  What I don't ever really care to see is "the true story" or the "truth behind the magic" or any boring sort of variation that reduces the characters to mere mortal men--there are other characters to explore those stories with. So all it

This one isn't really plot focused at all, so I'll keep this post short.

The week before last's is still coming, hopefully tomorrow.  But Road to E3 is also a thing so that might slow me up a bit. Amazing Spider Man It's funny because Pete literally brought toys to fight against an unjust occupation of Silver Sable's nation.  Seriously, why on Earth are so many of these vehicles color-coded?  You can hear Peter coming from a mile away with all the puns and bad jokes, but now you have to see him from a mile off too? Still, as much as I'm overall annoyed that Peter's about to go from multibillionaire good guy to working for a digital version of the Daily Bugle or whatever, this is actually a great way to close out Pete's billionaire phase, going head to head with Norman Osborn's army with one of his own.  He's basically serving as the Big Good here, arming a resistance force with the means to fight back against their oppressors literally single-handed.  There's even a bit of subterfuge at the start of the issue w

Ugh.  Two for two on frustrating DC shows. I desperately wish the writers for the CW-verse had the freedom of Marvel's Netflix series.

As we get closer to the biggest show in gaming, with all the major players confirming their press conferences and games that will (and sometimes won't ) be appearing at their shows, I thought it'd be cool to take a look at each company's press conference and talk about the games most likely to appear there, and perhaps even discuss a few rumors and the likelihood of them actually being true. I'll be releasing these every Friday in the run-up to the actual show, with a release schedule matching up to what days the individual press conferences come out.  So this week is EA since they moved and got a day of their own, next week will be Microsoft & Bethesda, the week after will be Ubisoft and Sony, and the final week will be Nintendo.   And if I manage not to screw all that up, the final week before E3 will be my own personal picks for what I hope to see/am most excited for.  With that all out of the way, let's get started with EA's press conference!

Only two more episodes left, and we took time off to do a story about Barry losing his memory?  Oh.  Okay.

Stinger finally comes face to face with his brother in this week's Kyuuranger!

Bit of work on last week's episode just in time for this week's, which should go up tomorrow!

(Full disclosure: I have not gotten the chance to sit down and play Star Ocean 5 yet, merely watched a ton of LPs about it.  I have played Star Oceans 2 through 4, however.) The other day, tri-ace came up as a topic of discussion on a forum I visit, and I was forced to face some unfortunate realities about what once might have been my favorite developer.  Creator of the Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile franchises, tri-ace played a large role in my gaming as a child--Star Ocean 2: The Second Story and Star Ocean 3: Till the End of Time stick out far more in my memories than any non- Tactics Final Fantasy, so to a preteen/teenaged version of me, tri-ace was more important than Squaresoft. So when The Last Hope offered some of the most annoying J-RPG stereotyped characters I'd ever wasted my time playing, to say that I was frustrated was putting it mildly.   For Star Ocean 5, I had my hopes high--I couldn't believe the franchise was coming back at all, but I felt confident

Savitar stands revealed....